The People's Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League

315 Pages·2000·18.23 MB·English

by  Paul A. Pickering

The People's Bread
This page intentionally left blank
THE PEOPLE'S BREAD
A HISTORY OF THE
ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE
Paul A. Pickering and Alex Tyrrell
Leicester University Press
London and New York
Leicester University Press
A Continuum imprint
Wellington House, 125 Strand, London WC2R 0BB
370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6503
First published 2000
© Paul A. Pickering and Alex Tyrrell 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0 7185 0218 3 (hardback)
Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
The Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction 1
2 'An Engine of Political Warfare' 14
3 A Nation of Repealers: The League in the English
Provinces and Scotland 41
4 West Britons: The League in Wales and Ireland 67
5 The Organ of Veneration: The League and Religion 88
6 'The Petticoat Politicians of Manchester': Women
and the League 116
7 'The People's Grain': The League and the Working
Class 139
8 'A Guerilla Warfare': The League and Parliament 165
9 Theatres of Discussion: League Meetings and Rituals 191
10 'The Progeny of Mammon': A Biographical Analysis
of the Manchester Anti-Corn Law Association
Council, 1839-40 217
11 Conclusion: 'A Long and Doubtful Road' 247
Appendix 1: Anti-Corn Law Associations, 1838-44 253
Appendix 2: Localities Represented at League
National Delegate Conferences 261
Appendix 3: Members of Parliament who Voted
for Total and Immediate Repeal, 1842-46 266
Appendix 4: Manchester Anti-Corn Law Association
Council, 1839-40 272
Appendix 5: Occupation Profile of the Manchester
ACLA Council, 1839-40 284
Select Bibliography 287
Index 295
This page intentionally left blank
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. The League Council in Session
2. Free Trade with All the World
3. Location Map of Anti-Corn Law Associations
4. Great Free Trade Banquet at Manchester
5. The Secret Office at the Post Office
6. The League Bazaar
This page intentionally left blank
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is the product of a long-standing professional relationship that is
also a close personal friendship. We both believe that we produce our best
work under the pressure of each other's expectations and thus our first
acknowledgment is to each other.
The plans for the book were drawn up at weekly lunchtime meetings
over several months in Melbourne, but it has been written while we have
been separated by over 600 kilometres. For all the difficulties that
inevitably confront a project completed under such circumstances, one of
the advantages is that the ideas that it contains have been separately and
profitably aired in seminar papers and less formally with colleagues in two
history departments: at LaTrobe University in Melbourne, and the
Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University
in Canberra.
Research for the book has been completed in the Chifley and Menzies
Libraries, Australian National University, the Borchardt Library, LaTrobe
University, the Victorian State Library, the National Library of Australia,
the British Library, St. Pancras, the British Newspaper Library, Colindale,
the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the Manchester Public Library, the House
of Lords Records Office, the National Library of Scotland, the West Sussex
Record Office, the British Library of Political and Economic Science,
London School of Economics, Edinburgh University Library, Glasgow
University Library, and John Rylands Library, Manchester.
We are grateful to the staff of these various institutions for their
assistance. We would like to acknowledge the financial assistance of our
respective departments that made overseas research trips possible for both
of us. Alex Tyrrell also received funding for this project from the Australian
Research Council.
The manuscript was read by Professor F.B. Smith, Australian National
University, Dr Owen Ashton, Staffordshire University, and (in part)
Professor Rhys Isaac, LaTrobe University. We would like to thank them
for their many helpful comments and suggestions. As a general reader
Suzanne Pickering also highlighted numerous errors and lapses of clarity.
Our thanks are also due to Janet Joyce and her highly professional team at
Continuum.